Frankfurt or Interlaken?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on nightlife and good for families with your weighting.
Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.
What matters to you?
Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.
The verdict
Choose Frankfurt if you want museums, a wide choice of restaurants and evenings that carry on late, with plenty for children too, including 2 theme parks within reach.
Choose Interlaken if the trip is about being outdoors and swimming in fresh water, with 12 beaches nearby, and you are content with few restaurants, almost no nightlife and a small museum offering.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Frankfurt and Interlaken are level on 0.
| Frankfurt | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 0 | 0 |
| Swim season months | 0 | 0 |
| Beaches 10 km | 4 | 12 |
| Coast distance | 327 km | 713 km |
| Water distance | — | — |
Places to eat. Frankfurt leads by 41 points.41
| Frankfurt | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 70 | 29 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 1,160 | 118 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 31 | 17 |
Museums & heritage. Frankfurt leads by 46 points.46
| Frankfurt | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 69 | 23 |
| Museums within 10 km | 79 | 5 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 43 | 2 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 54 | 40 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 4 | 2 |
Nightlife. Frankfurt leads by 55 points.55
| Frankfurt | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 59 | 4 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 931 | 42 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 691 | 38 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 74 | 90 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 56 | 3 |
Nature & day trips. Frankfurt leads by 37 points.37
| Frankfurt | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 64 | 27 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 28 | 19 |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 11 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 100 |
| Park area within 2 km | 124 hectares | 5 hectares |
Good for families. Frankfurt leads by 54 points.54
| Frankfurt | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 68 | 14 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 45 | 11 |
| Park area within 2 km | 124 hectares | 5 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 2 | 0 |
Sights concentration. Frankfurt leads by 39 points.39
| Frankfurt | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 61 | 22 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 129 | 14 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Frankfurt leads by 25 points.25
| Frankfurt | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 60 | 35 |
| Price level global | 75.9 | 110.5 |
| Daily budget | €163 | €248 |
Year-round weather. Frankfurt leads by 5 points.5
| Frankfurt | Interlaken | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 62 | 57 |
| Monthly daytime high | 5 °C to 26.2 °C | 2.8 °C to 23.6 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 38 mm to 68 mm | 34 mm to 68 mm |
| Dry months | 1 | 3 |
Where they differ
Frankfurt has many times as many bars and nightclubs, most near the centre, far more restaurants and a wider range of kitchens, and many times as many museums, with 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2. For children there are more attractions, more park space and 2 theme parks within reach where Interlaken has none.
Interlaken counts 12 beaches nearby against Frankfurt's 4, all freshwater, and it is the drier of the two, with more months at 40mm of rain or less.
Where they are alike
Neither is a swimming destination in the usual sense: there is no coast at either, and neither has a month with sea at 21°C or more, so what swimming there is happens in fresh water and only in the warm weeks.
The two also share the shape of their year. Both peak in July, at 26°C and 24°C, both are coldest in January, and rain falls in every month rather than gathering into one wet season.
Which traveller are you?
Museum and restaurant travellers: Frankfurt, with many times as many museums and a far wider choice of kitchens near the centre, plus 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach for days out of town.
Families with young children: Frankfurt again. There are far more attractions and much more park space near the centre, and 2 theme parks within reach where Interlaken has none, which matters on a rainy July day.
Walkers and lake swimmers who want quiet evenings: Interlaken, with 12 beaches nearby and summer highs of 24°C. Nightlife is minimal and there is little to walk between in town, which is the point.
What the numbers don't tell you
The daily budget figures, €163 and €248, are national price levels in Germany and Switzerland, not measurements of either city. A large or heavily visited town can sit well away from its country's average, by more than the gap between the two figures, so treat them as a rough frame and not as evidence that one trip costs more than the other.
No weather station near Interlaken records sunshine hours, so that figure is missing rather than low and that side of the weather comparison is simply unmeasured. Note too that the warmest months are also among the wettest in both, at up to 68mm and 62mm.
When should you go?
The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.
Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Frankfurt: 1991-2020 normals, Frankfurt Westend (2 km from centre). Interlaken: 2005-2020 (rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Meiringen / Unterbach (19.3 km from centre).
Frankfurt holds usable warmth longer at the shoulders: May reaches 21°C and October 15°C, where Interlaken manages 17°C and 14°C. The trade is rain, heaviest in high summer at around 68mm a month, so the warmest weeks are also the wettest.
Interlaken is at its strongest in high summer, with highs of 24°C, and its late season is drier: September brings 38mm against Frankfurt's 50mm. Winter is cold and damp in both, so neither is a winter trip.
Getting there
| Flying from | Frankfurt | Interlaken |
|---|---|---|
| LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2 | 1 h 25 m €74-124 FRA · 13 km | 1 h 35 m €110-163 ZRH · 100 km |
| IstanbulIST, SAW | 2 h 50 m €135-301 FRA · 13 km | 2 h 45 m €110-133 ZRH · 100 km |
| BerlinBER | 1 h 10 m €157-188 FRA · 13 km | 1 h 25 m €140-176 ZRH · 100 km |
| New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA | 7 h 55 m €537-713 FRA · 13 km | 8 h 5 m €606-782 1 stop ZRH · 100 km |
| ViennaVIE | 1 h 25 m €141-152 FRA · 13 km | 1 h 25 m €174-215 1 stop ZRH · 100 km |
| MadridMAD | 2 h 20 m €145-238 1 stop FRA · 13 km | 2 h 5 m €158-220 1 stop ZRH · 100 km |
| PalmaPMI | 2 h 10 m no fares FRA · 13 km | 1 h 50 m €84-103 ZRH · 100 km |
| DubaiDXB, DWC | 6 h 20 m €296-339 1 stop FRA · 13 km | 6 h 15 m €232-366 1 stop ZRH · 100 km |
| SingaporeSIN, XSP | 12 h 45 m no fares FRA · 13 km | 12 h 45 m no fares ZRH · 100 km |
| Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE | 12 h 10 m no fares FRA · 13 km | 12 h 0 m no fares ZRH · 100 km |
The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-09 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.
Before you go
| Measure | Frankfurt | Interlaken |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | German | French, German, Italian, Romansh |
| Currency | Euro (EUR) | Swiss Franc (CHF) |
| Sockets | CF230 V, 50 Hz | CJ230 V, 50 Hz |
| Driving side | Right | Right |
| Time zone | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer | UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer |
| Emergency number | 112 | 112 |
| Elevation | 101 m | 571 m |
| Main airport | Frankfurt Main Airport (FRA)13 km from centre293 non-stop destinations | Zürich Airport (ZRH)100 km from centre181 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 10 days | 10 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Frankfurt | Interlaken |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 775,790 | 6,123 |
| People per km² | 3,124 | 1,424 |
| Museums within 10 km | 53 | 3 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 4 | 2 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 71 | 22 |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Frankfurt or Interlaken somewhere new.